A medical research team that has combed reports and studies from prominent industry journals -- including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), New England Journal of Medicine and the Archives of Internal Medicine (AIM) -- concludes that hospitals and clinics can be exceedingly dangerous places for patients.

Medical harm visited on in-house patients -- whether it owes to a surgical error, medication error, misdiagnosis of an illness, hospital-acquired infection or other cause -- is rampant in medical facilities throughout the United States.

Hard numbers culled from careful and respected studies attest to just how seriously adverse -- even fatal -- medical intervention can be for some patients.

A New England Journal of Medicine study reports, for example, that more than one third of patients who are admitted to hospitals suffer an adverse event.

The majority of those are related to medication errors. Authors of a JAMA study state that adverse drug reactions stemming from medication mistakes constitute the fourth leading cause of death in the country.

Indeed, those authors state that about 14 percent of all admitted patients are ultimately victimized by some type of drug error. That assessment is buttressed by a study outlined in the AIM concluding that up to 24 medication errors occur for every 100 hospital admissions.

Other numbers prominently surface from multiple studies underscoring the magnitude of medical harm. An estimated 30,000-plus patients die from surgical errors each year; nearly 100,000 die from hospital infections; and over one million are killed annually from some type of medical intervention.

Is there an antidote to that? The research team, which has authored a book entitled Death by Medicine, says that better results can only ensue with strong encouragement of a medical culture that actively identifies, analyzes and learns from its errors.

Until that happens, they say, the number of patients dying from medical errors each day in the United States will be roughly equivalent to the number that would die in six jumbo jet crashes.

Source: Star Phoenix, "Time to admit, rectify the toll of medical errors" Nov. 17, 2011